The End of the Social Compact

What our government is not admitting to: The Compact is Broken.

This is not something minor that can be swept under the rug.
It is the issue that will define our relationship to our government for years to come.
It is spelled out in Bentham, Rousseau, and by all of the social philosophers who have defined our relationship either wholly or in part to our society.

For the first time since the Magna Carta and the Rights of Man, the western world must confront the fact that the Compact is broken and may never be mended in the same way again. Not only is it broken, but it has been broken by the country professing the most progressive of values, America. And that is the crux of all of the problems we, as Americans, face now and in the years to come.

What is complicated here is that although the physical manifestation of what has happened is real, the incalculable damage has been to our psyches. The understanding that there is an exchange that takes place to make the concept of society work that involves both parties, society, per se, and the individual who come together for joint interests and a common cause. .It is an indelible provision of the social contract that the society provides protection. This notion lays at the very core of our society and constitutes the fabric of what makes a society workable..

Consider that from the very beginning, the average man gave up certain of his perceived “inalienable” rights for the protection afforded by the feudal ruler. This understanding has allowed for the perpetuation of society over the last twenty thousand years. It lies at the very heart of our philosophical underpinning of what a society is and how it functions. And it has stayed fundamentally the same despite the fact that society has evolved into newer, more progressive forms that fundamentally serve the same purpose.
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If you cancel the perceived role of the society which is protection for its citizens or negate that responsibility, you remove one of the very constructs that binds man to accept the ruling of that society.

Today, the role of the society is an issue yet untouched by the media and government, because of and by itself it is very incendiary, yet should that perceived role be tampered with or sullied, the relationship that remains becomes charged with unpredictable implications. If the society is either unwilling or incapable of extending the mantle of protection to its citizenry, it is a society that no longer functions in the traditional or philosophical sense. Yet, this is the very situation we find ourselves in. On two occasions over the last five years, we have found that our government, besides its assurances otherwise, has been unable to provide we, the citizenry, with the most elemental form of security.

This brings into question what is our enduring obligation to such a government.
If the citizen cannot find protection within the society he has agreed to join voluntarily, then one might ask what is the basis for the relationship? Or is there a basis for a relationship? Without both sides giving to the social compact, that that compact becomes frayed and the relationship becomes one-sided and, in a sense, no relationship at all... In the absence of that perceived security, individual rights gain ascendancy and chaos may be the end result.

For surely, without the gains and assurances of freedom as guaranteed under a free society, the citizen no longer has a responsibility to abide by that society’s dictates and may choose to abrogate them if it is no longer in the citizen’s best interests .

In recognition of this failing, it becomes appropriate for the individual to assume responsibility for his own safety thereby abridging his contract either written or otherwise that had defined his or her prior obligation.

There is, however, an inherent flaw in that argument. Free-will, as exemplified by the ego, as Freud refers to it, if not constrained by the super-ego can manifest itself in the hegemony of the individual which is antithesis of the concept of a workable society.. Citizenry without the benefit of society’s version of the super-ego can easily degenerate into entropy and resulting chaos.

Is there an alternative?

Yes, if the society seizes the opportunity and is willing to make those adjustments deemed necessary to guarantee the level of protection and security promised and inferred as inimical to the social contract hope may not be lost. Should those guarantees be recognized, it may reverse those forces that impel towards dissolution of that contract. We are at that stage now. Will our government in good will, with the confidence of its citizens, make amends and heal the breach? If not, the citizen will recognize that his or her own protection is in his own hands and act accordingly. The end result will be a kind of entropy and the end of society as we know it.

There is still another option: That the people seize a government that does not recognize the full responsibility that is implicit in government and change it through the action of the majority; thereby, restoring the notion and guarantees of a functioning society. The continuation of society is in man’s best interests and the tenuousness of our relationship seems hardly understood.


Les Aaron

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